The video game industry has seen considerable evolution, from the introduction of stand-alone arcade games, to home-based computer games, to the emergence of games made for specialized consoles. Democratization of the Internet then enabled the next major development, namely “cloud gaming”. In a cloud gaming system, a player can utilize an ordinary Internet-enabled appliance such as a smartphone or tablet to connect to a video game server over the Internet. The video game server starts a session for the player, and may do so for multiple players. The video game server renders frames of video content and generates audio for the player based on player actions (e.g., moves, selections) and other attributes of the game. Encoded video and audio is delivered to the player's device over the Internet, and is reproduced as visible images and audible sounds. In this way, players from anywhere in the world can play a video game without the use of specialized video game consoles, software or graphics processing hardware.
To ensure a pleasurable experience for players, particularly those using mobile devices, there is a need to adequately manage video content rendering resources in a cloud gaming system.